She never saw the mosquito, and it was another 17 months before Annamay Pierse felt the full horror of its bite. The pain may never entirely go away, but Pierse is trying day by day to get better.

Friday was a good day. Pierse dived into the familiar pool at the University of British Columbia, where she had put in thousands of hours to become the fastest in the world, and swam the 50-metres butterfly just for fun.

“It was a little hard,” she smiled upon emerging from the water at the Mel Zajac International Swim Meet. “I haven’t swam it in probably four years. Let’s just say that was my best time and go with it.

“I just have to have fun and love the sport for what it is.”

Pierse’s time in the heats was 30.52 seconds, only 2/100ths off her best for an event she never swims. The world record holder in the 200 breaststroke was 43rd on Friday. She had a blast a couple of lanes over from her baby sister, Patricia, a high-school senior from Edmonton who will be swimming at UBC next season.

“She was faster than I was at that age,” Annamay, 28, said. “She could break my record.”

Annamay Pierse is the fastest woman in history over 200 metres in the breaststroke, but she won’t be going to the London Olympics this summer because a mosquito bit her at the 2010 Commonwealth Games in India. The swimmer contracted a severe case of Dengue fever. She came home to Vancouver and went to bed and a few days later thought she was going to die.

“It felt like every single bone in my body had been broken,” she explained a few months ago.

“My nose kept bleeding and my mouth kept bleeding. I couldn’t eat. I lost a lot of weight very fast. I couldn’t do anything. Basically, I curled up in a ball, wishing things were over.”

Eventually, Pierse recovered. But her swimming career did not.

Unable for months to train properly, she struggled throughout 2011 and wasn’t swimming fast times when she went to the 2012 Canadian Olympic trials in Montreal at the end of March.

It was just 2009 when Pierse skimmed across four lengths of a pool in Rome at the world championships to set a new world record in the 200 breaststroke of 2:20.12. No woman has ever gone faster.

But in Montreal, Pierse finished fifth in 2:27.14, easily beaten by Olympic qualifiers Tara Van Beilen and Martha McCabe, Ontario girls who have been helped along by Pierse’s wake on the UBC team.

Swim Canada chief executive officer and national coach Pierre Lafontaine said: “What we have today in our women’s breaststroke program has everything to do with her. Annamay set a tone in our national team a few years back that was unbreakable. It was fierce. She helped make the team what it is today. She set the tone for what greatness should be.”

Pierse said she is honoured by comments like these and grateful for the outpouring of support. But at her core, she is a swimmer, a competitor, and she couldn’t go fast enough to make the Olympic team.

“I did everything I possibly could,” she said. “I had all these medical issues, especially Dengue fever, which broke me. My body just wouldn’t respond the same way it used to and just wouldn’t recover. It was a lot more difficult just to do half the things I used to do [in training]. I guess in some ways it’s good because I know how tough I am. But it does make it harder when something’s taken away from you for nothing that you did.”

At her age, a swimming comeback is unlikely. She has a degree in pyschology but plans to try a career in fashion design. She said she takes things a day at a time.

“It’s still emotional at times,” she admitted. “Some days I’m good and some days I’m not good. I’ll hear about the London Olympics or commercials for it will come on and I still have to sit there and take some deep breaths and realize, ‘OK, that’s not going to be me.’ But I still want to be supportive of my teammates who are going to the Olympics to represent our country.

“Swimming has been such a big part of my life for 22 years. This is not something that’s easy to get over. It will take a while.

“I’m not an angry person, although I did have a long time when I was angry, bitter and upset about things. But life is not fun when you’re angry; I know that.

“You realize there are other things that make you happy. And you need to be happy.”

Pierse’s spirits were boosted last weekend when her boyfriend, paddler Mark Oldershaw, won a World Cup canoe event in Poland to qualify for the Olympics.

So she will be going to London after all.

Lafontaine wants to keep Pierse involved in Swimming Canada said her greatest contribution to the sport may yet be ahead of her.

There is a lot to leave behind.

“Being a national-team member has meant the world to me,” Pierse said.

“There’s not very many people who can say they broke a world record or hold a world record. I can tell someone, at one point, I was the best there ever has been in the world. That’s pretty cool.”

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